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Our sponsors
The Plantsmen Nursery
The greatest diversity of native plants and other items of interest to habitat gardeners
Growing Wild Perennials
Maple Hill Nursery
Phoenix Flower Farm
Wild Birds Unlimited
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Thank yous!
Beth Mitchell for arranging for our meeting location
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Carol Biesemeyer for putting together a top-notch program for the year
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Larry Keassa of Maple Hill Nursery, Dan Segal of The Plantsmen Nursery, and Jim Engel, of White Oak Nursery for providing plants for our sale, and for all of our members who donated plants!
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Opportunity to buy more plants and help HGCNY, too!
Larry Keassa, of Maple Hill Nursery, has offered to donate 20% of the purchase price of any plants bought next weekend Sept. 26-27. He will be there Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm and on Sunday until noon.
Give us your receipts (at a meeting or mail to 401 Parsons Drive Syracuse, 13219) and he'll reimburse HGCNY.
Here's the list of plants.
Thanks, Larry! |
FREE SCREENING!
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HOMEGROWN: 21st Century Family Farm
A documentary about modern-day urban homesteaders
followed by panel discussing including HGCNY and EGCNY
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WHEN: Sat. Oct. 3 at 10:30 am and at 12:30 pm
WHERE: at the Westcott Community Center 826 Euclid Ave., Syracuse
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Also of interest
"From
Hairy Willow to Wood Nymph" a presentation by Matt Perry from Spring Farms Nature Center in Clinton, N.Y. Learn about some of the hundreds of Flora and Fauna of this huge
habitat native restoration project. Included will be some non-lethal
methods of coping with invasive species.
Wed. Sept. 23, 7:30 PM at University United Methodist Church, 1085 E.Genesee St. Syracuse. Presented by Sierra club.
And bluebirds...
John Rogers will offer a
presentation on the life history of the Eastern Bluebird,
nest box management, other birds that next in bluebird boxes, and
more.. on Wed., Sept 30th at
7PM at Camroden Church on the corner of Camroden Road and
East Floyd Road, in the Town of Floyd. Call (315) 865
5957 for info.
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Greetings!
This Sunday is the beginning of our 2009-2010 program year, which has a mix of "big idea" and nitty-gritty programs. One of the major reasons we started HGCNY many years ago was to provide continuing education and inspiration for people to become habitat gardeners. We're sure you'll enjoy these programs, learn a lot, and be inspired to continue on your path of becoming a habitat gardener!
Janet Allen,
President, Habitat Gardening in Central New York
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Sept. 27: "Habitat Gardening for Life"
(Due to a family emergency Dr. Mark Meisner is unable to join us this Sunday. We're looking forward to rescheduling his talk at a later date.) A "before" pictureJanet Allen will be presenting "Habitat Gardening for Life," a program about her evolution as a gardener, and on the basics of habitat gardening. Lots of new photos! DATE: Sunday, Sept. 27 at 2:00 pm at Le Moyne College. SPECIAL NOTE: Although our programs usually take place in the Library's Special Activities Room, this month it will take place in the Coyne Science Center in Room 227. Here are the detailed campus directions and a map.Our meetings are free and open to the public. Feel free to bring a friend!
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What's native, what's not
It can be a challenge to know what's native and what's not especially since we can't rely on what "looks" native. For example, oxeye daisies or daylilies may look native, but they aren't.
Here are some useful resources to solve the dilemma. They're some of many helpful plant resources on our HGCNY website.
Books: Leopold, Don. Native Plants of the Northeast: A Guide for Gardening and Conservation - Covers all types of plant - ferns, wildflowers, shrubs etc. for the Northeast Cullina, William. Three books covering the entire continent, so you need to check range of each plant.
  
Wildflowers Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines
Native Ferns, Moss, and GrassesAll four of these books are great references to own! Web resources:The NY Flora Atlas - This site lists ALL plants in NYS - even non-native and
invasive. To check whether a plant is native, click on Advanced Search (in the Flora Atlas Search in the upper right corner), and then select Native
under the Nativity box below. You can even select
for an individual county or group of counties!
If you want a list of all the native plants in NYS, just those native to Onondaga County, or plants native to a specified group of counties, just select Native for NYS, and/or click on the county or counties desired, then
click Search at the bottom of the page.
Voila! Up pops the list!
Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping: Chesapeake Bay Watershed - The Chesapeake Bay watershed reaches into NYS,
but not quite to Syracuse. Still, it's close
enough to Central New York to be useful, and many of the plants described as native to that watershed are also native here. Published by the US Fish and Wildlife
Service, this free downloadable booklet is a wonderfully organized guide - thorough, but compact. It also lists each plant's wildlife value - a real bonus. In addition to the plant information pages, it has lists of "Plants with a Purpose," such as plants for a dry meadow. Lady Bird Johnson's Wildflower Center has a list of recommended native plants for NYS, and also a combination search where you can specify NYS and also characteristics such as light requirements, bloom time, color etc. Very handy.
Some sites to avoid:Some sites - even some with ".org" in their name - may appear to be unbiased, but they apparently are connected to their own "recommended" businesses that promote even invasive plants, such as dame's rocket. (Contrary to most people's belief, anyone can purchase a ".org" URL. There is no requirement that you have to be an organization...) It's best to stick with the sites sponsored by legitimate organizations such as those mentioned above. |
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Words of Wisdom: "A plant that has fed nothing has not done its job"
Somehow along the way we have come to expect perfection in our gardens:
the plastic quality of artificial flowers is now seen as normal and
healthy. It is neither. Instead, it is a clear sign of a garden so
contrived that it is no longer a living community, so unbalanced that
any life form other than the desired plants is viewed as an enemy and
quickly eliminated. Today's gardeners are so concerned about the health
of their plants that they run for the spray can at the first sign of an
insect. Ironically, a sterile garden is one teetering on the brink of
destruction. It can no longer function as a dynamic community of
interacting organisms, all working smoothly to perpetuate their
interactions. Its checks and balances are gone. Instead, the sterile
garden's continued existence depends entirely on the frantic efforts of
the gardener alone.
From Doug Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home,
2nd ed. pp. 95-96
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Become an official "Wild Ones" member!
Our meetings are free and open to the public, and HGCNY is run solely by volunteers. We pay our speakers and purchase this Constant Contact email service from our fundraising efforts and from members' dues, which are paid to Wild Ones, and partially reimbursed to us.
But with the economic downturn, membership is also down, and our national organization, Wild Ones (a 501(c)3 education and advocacy non-profit) has asked that chapters forgo reimbursement of dues this quarter. HGCNY has agreed, but we'd also like to encourage you to become a member if you aren't already and to renew your membership.
One valuable benefit of membership is the bimonthly Wild Ones Journal, full of useful articles on native plants and natural landscaping. Another is that you'll be supporting this national effort to promote native plants and natural landscaping!
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Lab of Ornithology contest: A murder of crows and other spooky bird tales
(A "murder" is the name for a large group of crows)
From the Cornell Lab website:Birds can be downright spooky
sometimes. A European Starling flies at your head, thousands of crows
roost in a downtown park, a pigeon takes over your balcony. With
Halloween just a few weeks away, we want to see and hear spooky things about birds! We'll try to explain what's really going on with their puzzling behavior.
Go outside and take a photo, do a painting, write a story or
a poem, or even shoot a video showing crows, pigeons, starlings, an
owl, or any kind of bird doing something strange. For more information about the contest and prizes... Enter now through October 31, 2009
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